


Across the Chasm, She Jumped

by orichan



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo Needs A Hug, F/M, Force Bond (Star Wars), Post-Canon, Post-Canon Fix-It, Redeemed Ben Solo, Rey Needs A Hug, World Between Worlds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-21
Updated: 2020-03-21
Packaged: 2021-02-28 19:15:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,541
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23252305
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orichan/pseuds/orichan
Summary: They kissed and he disappeared, but when Rey dreamed of places and planets she had never seen with her waking eyes, he was the only constant.“I hate you,” she said to him, finally.He shot her an infuriating amused, lopsided smile. “I know.”She would have kicked him if he was closer. “But I miss you more.”“I know.”
Relationships: Rey & Ben Solo | Kylo Ren, Rey/Ben Solo, Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 20
Kudos: 129
Collections: Reylo Charity Anthology: Volume 2





	Across the Chasm, She Jumped

**Author's Note:**

> Or, a post-canon fix-it fic inspired by this theory: https://twitter.com/AaronQuinton78/status/1217597593167056896?s=20

They kissed and _he_ disappeared. 

* * *

The overwhelming feeling of happiness at the Resistance Base caught her by surprise. Or maybe it wasn’t surprise, maybe it was dissonance. 

She let go of a breath she didn’t know she was holding when she found Finn and Poe. They were alive and smiling, at least. Unlike— 

She didn’t let herself think about _that_ as she hugged them close, but she couldn’t stop tears from falling. 

The war was over, Palpatine was dead, her friends were safe, but _he_ was gone.

* * *

She finally dreamed of him. Kind of. 

She was in the mirror world, looking at her infinite self and he was… not exactly there, she couldn’t even see the shape of him, but she felt him. She feverishly reached out only for the foggy glass to reveal her own reflection. 

She woke up. 

* * *

Rebuilding was hard work, busy work, which suited Rey just fine. It was satisfying to build something with her hands and see the buildings rise up around her. It kept her from thinking too much.

Wiping sweat from her brows, she mindlessly lifted stones with the Force and placed them one on top of another until it formed a solid stretch of wall. Until she was too tired to worry, to grieve, until she was exhausted enough to actually sleep at night.

It was nice. 

* * *

In her dream, she was in the forest where they first met. Everything was just as she remembered: the slippery moss covered stones under her feet, the position of the light filtering through the woods around her, the hint of smoke in the air. 

But he wasn’t there. 

* * *

Finn told her he was Force sensitive and wanted her to train him.

Rey tried.

She described how she had instinctively unlocked and pulled out knowledge from an unseen source in the Force, thinking Finn would just get it. He didn’t. When she tried to show him by demonstrating, she couldn’t quite locate the source anymore, only emptiness. She tried again. Same outcome.

Shaken by the discovery, she sent Finn away with her Jedi books and meditated the way Leia had taught her. 

She felt the warmth of the surrounding energy around her immediately. The Force hadn’t forsaken her, at least. She reached out, searching for answers from the endless expanse of the universe. Memories of her first Force vision surfaced, mixed in with memories of what happened after, and eventually, _finally_ , the answer came: her instincts were always there, but the initial knowledge of how to harness the Force, before her trainings, came from _him_ and the void she now felt was...

There were round wet drops on her lap when she came out of meditation.

* * *

In her nightmare, she was walking in the yellow sand dunes of Jakku. She wasn’t sure how she got there, only that she had been walking for seemingly hours, hoping to see familiar landmarks or faces to no avail. 

She was just about ready to collapse. She was too hot and too thirsty and so, so tired. 

Then, out of nowhere, she saw the shape of _him_ , walking just ahead of her, his entirely weather inappropriate black cloak fluttering in the desert wind. 

She ran as quickly as she could with her feet sinking into the dunes, but when she reached for him, she only felt air and coarse sand.

* * *

Maz brought her and Finn to a cave with kyber crystals. 

The one that called to her, the one that was all her own, was yellow.

Yellow like the dunes in Jakku, yellow like the sentinels in the Jedi texts. She felt the Force was trying to tell her something, but what, she didn’t fully know. 

* * *

He was standing just beyond her reach on a field that was too green and too lush to be real. 

When she couldn’t stand the sight of him anymore, she lay down on the grass and closed her eyes. As the morning dew soaked through her shirt, the tears that gathered at her lashes grew too heavy and trailed down her face. 

A shadow of touch, so light she thought she imagined it ran across her cheek. Her eyes flew open. And there was Ben, and he looked so sad and worried and real she felt her heart squeeze. “Rey.”

She shot up from her bed to the silence of her bedroom.

* * *

Jannah and Finn laughed at an inside joke on the other side of the cafeteria table. 

Next to her, Rose shifted her chair out abruptly and stood up with her half-eaten tray of food. 

Jannah looked up. “You going?” 

Rose nodded with a flat smile and made an obvious excuse, like needing to finish her research on irrigation. 

Finn pointed at the untouched cake on the tray. “You gonna finish that?”

“Yup, snack for later,” Rose said tersely and turned on her heel. Rey gave FInn a look and followed her out. 

“I’m fine,” Rose said when they were outside. 

Hurt oozed out of her like blood from a prick. “You don’t feel fine,” Rey said, catching her eyes. 

Rose looked away. “It’s just that I loved him, I wish I didn’t, but I did.”

She hugged Rose tight before she even fully registered she had moved. 

To watch your love from afar, alive, but never to return your feelings, or to have your love ripped away from you the moment your feelings were returned… 

Rey wasn’t sure which was worse.

* * *

The waves crashed around them onto the ruins of the Death Star, licking their feet. Their sabers were nowhere to be seen. In her dreams they never fought like they did in life. 

“I hate you,” she said to him, finally. 

He shot her an infuriating amused, lopsided smile. “I know.” 

She would have kicked him if he was closer. “But I miss you more.” 

“I know.” 

* * *

The town went up around her. The city was healing. People were laughing again, children were playing freely in the fields.

Rey smiled as she watched them, but felt like an outsider peering in.

* * *

She dreamt of familiar places and planets she had never seen with her waking eyes. 

He was the only constant. 

* * *

It was on the anniversary of their victory against Palpatine when Finn first publicly referred to Jannah as his girlfriend. Everyone had long suspected, but now it was official. 

Poe slapped him on his back, Jannah’s crew teased, and Beaumont brought out his best liquor and made everyone drink. When the party inevitably became too loud and rowdy, Rey escaped the festivity and made her way toward her room. It wasn’t all that late, a year ago, she might not have turned in so early, but now... The earlier she could sleep, the earlier she could see _him_. 

She was just about to turn the second corner when she a loud clattered coming from the hanger. Strange. No one should be working today. Curious, she made a detour to investigate, only to hear quiet conversations. She peered in and spied Rose tinkering with an engine, one of the new recruits by her side. He said something Rey couldn’t quite make out and Rose hit him playfully. They both laughed.

Rey smiled and went on her way.

* * *

She was traveling through space in the Falcon, but not the Falcon she knew. Rather, the ship from an earlier time, judging by how new and clean everything around her looked. 

Ben made a face next to her in the co-pilot seat. “I always hated this piece of junk.”

Rey rolled her eyes. “The galaxy thinks otherwise.” 

“The galaxy is wrong,” Ben said wryly. 

“I guess you would be happy to hear everyone in the _real_ world seemed to be taking a page from your book and moving on with new and better things.” She meant it as a snark, but her words lingered between them as Ben’s smirk dimmed.

Ben stared out the windows at the stars with an unreadable expression. “As they should.”

She thought about the new stores filled with useless but beautiful things and the new restaurants filled with food she didn’t know existed. “I wish you could see it all.” _With me_. She kept the last part silent. 

* * *

_Be with me. Be with me._

Two unfamiliar ghosts, a woman and a man, heeded her call. They told her of their time long ago, their struggles with light and darkness, their story was so different than hers and yet so similar. They told her their names were Revan and Bastila.

“I was part of a dyad, once,” Rey said, her voice more bitter than she intended. 

“Once?”

Rey took a deep breath to steady her voice. “He saved my life and disappeared.” 

Bastila gave a long, sympathetic sigh. “My child,” she consoled. “Life is short, eternity is long. You’ll be with your other half again in the Force soon enough.” 

“Will I?” Rey challenged, fisting the fabric of her shirt. “I’ve felt people become one with the Force before, but not like this,” she swallowed and admitted something she never let herself admitted before. “When he passed on in Exegol, he faded into _nothing_.” 

“Exegol,” Revan whispered and turned to look at his companion before turning back to Rey. “The Force brought us to you for a reason after all.” He paused for a moment, then asked, “Did he fall into one of the fissures?”

Rey frowned. She wasn’t sure, but there was a large hole in the floor and Ben wasn’t there when she first woke up. “If he did, he climbed back out.” 

Revan shook his head solemnly. “The fissures on that planet lead to a transportive vergence in the force. If he entered one of those…”

“He wasn’t fully where you were when he saved you,” Bastila finished his sentence like they were one. 

* * *

“Did you fall into the fissure that day at Exegol?” The question burst out of her lips the moment he appeared in the snowy forest, the same one where she marked him a lifetime ago. 

He exhaled audibly, white smoke puffing out of his mouth. “Only if your definition of a fall includes being involuntarily thrown.”

Rey felt her heart race as the confirmation set in. She tried to tell herself it was a ghost of a chance, but hope broke through anyway like the sun after perpetual rain.

* * *

There were only two pages in the Jedi texts on transportive vergence. Rey re-read it so many times she could recite it with her eyes closed. 

* * *

Tonight, they were sitting side by side under an expansive night sky, the sound of soft ocean waves somewhere in the distance. It was a good dream.

Ben was just sitting there, looking up at the sky, silent as usual. He looked at peace, the way he never did in life. 

She decided this was as good a time as any to ask the question that had been eating at her for months. “Are you real?” 

He gave a shrug that reminded her of his father. “Am I?”

“I thought for a long time that you were just a figment of my dreams, but now I don’t know.”

He swallowed. “Rey, I’m fairly sure—” 

“I know. I was there when you faded, but I think...” She reached out, and for a moment her hand hover above his out of fear she would be proven wrong, but the truth beckoned. She steeled herself and placed her hand on top of his. Their eyes instantly met in shock. 

He was there, not warm, but solid. 

She spoke first. “You’re still somewhere.”

* * *

With Resistance occupying the last of the key Outer Region planets, Poe announced the formation of a new galactic government. He said it will be different than the New Republic, but exactly how, Rey didn’t fully understand, nor did she care.

“I’ve accepted a position in the new government,” Finn told her a few days later, after their weekly practice saber fight. “I heard you declined yours.” 

“I did,” Rey said. There was no point in lying about that.

“I’ll be heading to the new capital with Jannah and Poe.” He left the clear implication unsaid and sighed. “I would ask you to reconsider, but I can feel you have somewhere else you need to be.” 

Her chin trembled as she melted into what felt like their last embrace.

* * *

“Where are we?” She interrupted, waving at the scenic lake in front of her.

Ben frowned but answered her question anyway, “I think this is Naboo, where my grandmother was born, but don’t—”

“I like it here.” 

“Rey.”

“What? It’s nice, won’t it be—” Words dried up in her throat when she felt his cold hand wrapped around her wrist. She didn’t want to, but looked back, she couldn’t help herself. 

“Stop changing the topic!” he snapped. “The vergence is unpredictable, just because you enter in the same spot doesn’t mean you will—This is stupid!” He was short with her, he had never been short with her since he started appearing in her dreams. “You don’t know where, hell, _when_ , you’ll end up. You _can’t_ do this.” 

She hated being told what to do. She yanked her hand away and glared at him. “Try and stop me.” 

He glanced away furiously before glaring back at her. “You know I can’t.”

“Then, I am doing it.”

He chewed on his lower lip and his eyes welled up in frustrated tears, mirroring her own. “I want you to live a long and normal life, Rey.”

“Finding you is not something I choose to do, it’s something I have to do.” She took a step closer to him and she swore she could hear his heart speed up with hers. “I have to do this, don’t you understand?”

He closed his eyes and let out a pained gasp. “I do.” 

* * *

She went to Tatooine because she heard Luke grew up there and Leia’s home planet was long gone. 

It was too hot and too sandy and reminded her too much of Jakku. 

A nosey local asked for her name. She hesitated. _Solo,_ she almost said, but then she saw Leia and Luke’s ghosts standing at a distance and she gave theirs instead. It felt right, honoring their legacy this way before heading into the unknown. Under the binary suns, she buried their sabers in the sand, then turned back one last time toward the ghosts for a silent goodbye. 

They smiled back, as if they already knew.

* * *

They were back at the hut at Ahch-To on the last night, a fire burning between them, but in her dream the air was warmer than Rey remembered and her hair wasn’t wet. 

“I never told you the whole truth. When we touched hands, I didn’t just see the two of us.” 

Rey watched as firelight danced on his face, a slight twitch of his lips the only thing giving away his surprise. He was silent for a long moment, then he asked, barely a whisper, “What else did you see?”

She stared unblinking into his eyes. “Our child.” 

* * *

The Force buzzed in her veins as she looked down at the glowing blue fissure at Exegol. 

She steadied herself with a deep breath. “Ben.”

She jumped. 


End file.
